


Kids At The End Of The World

by CourierNinetyTwo



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: F/F, M/M, Multi, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 19:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12564444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: On the roadtrip home, the Phantom Thieves look towards their future.





	Kids At The End Of The World

The first day of the road trip flew by in a blink.

It was easy when there was so much to talk about. Akira chimed in whenever he felt the need, but there was a simple pleasure in existing at the eye of the storm, listening to his friends laugh and tease each other, debating over playlists and fast food choices on the path ahead. There were no bars around him anymore, no face of an impassive god overhead, nor the constant glow and flicker of billboards splashed around Tokyo. He'd never liked how easy it was to display a lie to the rest of the world, even when lying was the only way to survive.

Breathing here -- in this place with everyone so close -- felt like freedom.

"Hey." Ryuji leaned against his shoulder, blonde spikes tickling the line of Akira's jaw. "Makoto's getting tired driving, so we're going to crash for the night."

Morgana, who had spent most of the trip sunbathing in the back, yawned in agreement.

"Where?" He'd only seen this road once before, and it had been going the other way, forbidden to stop until being passed into Sojiro's custody.

Yusuke leaned over the top of the back seat, putting his head just above Futaba's, currently hunched over her phone. "There's an inn a few miles away."

"Sae gave me a quite a bit of money for the trip." Makoto chimed in from the front, although her eyes never left the road. "She said she wanted me to have a real break before starting college, so our lodgings are all paid for."

Ann straightened up in her seat, unfolding her legs from where they'd been braced against the dashboard. "You shouldn't have to cover everything, babe."

"I don't got a ton of pocket change, but I'll handle the road snacks." Ryuji's knee bumped Akira's when he patted his wallet. "That okay?"

Ann volunteered her money too -- while Yusuke signed up to taste-test the first bite of anything they got at a gas station -- before Futaba chimed in that she'd downloaded enough coupons to get anything they wanted free anyway. Haru looked surprised, one hand already in her purse to take out the company credit card. Once the commotion was enough of a distraction, Akira slipped his hand over Ryuji's and squeezed tight, finding the gaps between calloused fingers.

Ryuji froze, then realized where they were, sealed away from the rest of the world at sixty kilometers per hour. "Guess we can just do that now here, huh?"

"Yeah." Akira brought their joined hands up onto his leg, in open view. "But I'm okay with doing it anywhere."

Freedom had to mean something, after all.

\--

All the eager energy of the day took a nosedive once they checked into the inn, and after a bite to eat from the buffet by the bar, everyone made a beeline towards blankets and pillows. Akira slept dreamlessly -- for once -- and woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling, Ryuji's arm stretched out across his stomach. He turned his head to see across the room and found Makoto with Ann in a casual tangle, blonde hair hiding the older girl's face from view.

Futaba had crashed out by the corner next to the outlet, her phone and laptop chargers squeezed in beside one another, and a sleep mask with grumpy cartoon eyes pulled across her face. Yusuke was awake by the window, the whisper of a pencil on paper breaking the even rhythm of breathing across the room. 

At the realization that Haru's bed was empty, Akira sat up, drawing Yusuke's attention away from his sketchbook. "She wanted to have morning tea with the owner."

"Oh." Brushing sleep-swept hair back from his eyes, Akira relaxed. He would have apologized to Ryuji for pushing his arm away, but the other boy was still contently snoring. "...And pay the bill before the rest of us get to it, I bet."

"I wasn't going to stop her." Yusuke admitted with a shrug.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Akira pushed his cocoon of blankets back towards Ryuji before standing up to find where his glasses had gotten to. Once they were perched on his face, he slipped out of the room without a sound, pulling the door closed to ward off the noise of a slowly rousing inn.

Haru was at the very end of the hall, walking back with a smile, but stopped short when she saw him. Her cheeks flushed pink, but there was no hiding the signed receipt caught between her fingertips.

"The last time I took everyone out to celebrate, everything..." She swallowed hard, and an answering tightness seized Akira's chest. "It was the beginning of the end. I wanted to make up for it."

"You don't have anything to make up for." That was the last thing he wanted: for any of his friends to feel like they owed a debt. "But I'm sure everyone will appreciate it. I know I do."

A hint of a smile tugged Haru's lips. "I promise not to pay for everything. Half the fun is making do along the way, right?"

"Yeah." Akira smiled back, wide enough for her to mimic it.

\--

"Why did I have to sleep in the van?" Morgana protested, making a swipe with one paw towards the bun Ryuji smuggled for him out of the inn.

"Because they don't allow animals, and the proprietor doesn't know you can talk." Makoto murmured, starting up the engine with one solid twist of the key.

Now that they were away from Tokyo, the scenic route lay a hypnotic spell over the car, punctuated by the occasional changeup on Ann's playlist and Futaba's constantly clicking keys. The road stretched on forever, signs pointing to temples and tourist traps for those who wanted an escape from the main thoroughfare. Akira kept still with both hands in his lap, not wanting to wake Ryuji from an impromptu nap against one shoulder.

In the quiet, tension brewed without taking shape. Just yesterday there had been too much to talk about, with everyone tripping over one another to speak, and now the silence was almost impenetrable, cloaked in white noise. No adults were here to stop them or supervise, but the need for chaos died down to a dull roar.

After seeing reality pull itself apart, Akira found it difficult not to see the seams, how fragile the world was. The only thing that stayed were the bonds with everyone here, the connections that stretched like leylines all the way back to the city, embedded in a clinic, a gun shop, the fortune teller's booth. Shujin wouldn't have a foundation left without them.

Eventually Yusuke fell asleep, Morgana curled up in his lap. Haru was fading fast too, fingers tucked between the pages of her book in lieu of a bookmark. With the music loud enough to drown out any whispering, Makoto and Ann were talking softly between themselves in the front of the car, and Akira smiled to himself, not bothering to try and eavesdrop.

They probably had more to talk about together than anyone else here, he realized.

Futaba was the only other one fighting off fatigue, using her phone to boost the signal on her laptop whenever the distant wi-fi wavered. It was impossible to make sense of the windows of code scrolling by simultaneously, but Akira caught a couple of words here and there: _unexplained, cognitive psience, Persona._ The latter made him pause, and leaning over as carefully as he could, Akira dropped his voice to the same careful volume he used in every Palace when they were lurking in the shadows.

"Everything alright over there?"

She stiffened at the question, wary eyes flickering to the edge of her glasses and back again. "Doing research."

"I figured out that much." The question was _why_ , and Akira let the inquiry linger on his face until Futaba sighed.

"I was going to tell everyone later." Her fingers continued to move in a symphony of clicking keys. "Didn't you ever want to know how this all happened? If it happened before?"

Akira raised a brow. "You mean, with Yal-"

"Yeah." Futaba cut him off sharply. "Sure, everyone had desires that manifested into a freaky divine robo-angel, but it's not like humans being lazy is _new_ , you know?"

It wasn't, of course. There must have been some sort of catalyst, deeper than the wager between the Demiurge and Igor. Akira spent a moment in contemplation, running everything Justine and Caroline had ever said over in his mind, sifting through it like sand for gold.

The Velvet Room hadn't been invented solely for him. There was too much history there, a process that had been subverted by the imposter, and some latent power that gave flight to countless blue butterflies that lingered on the edge of his dreams.

"Lavenza told me she had sisters." Akira finally said aloud, and Futaba's mouth rounded into a surprised 'o'. "Maybe we're just the latest generation."

\--

They were a day away from his hometown when Ryuji confronted him.

Akira might have teased the other boy about cornering him in a rest stop bathroom if he wasn't sure Ryuji would turn too red to speak. There wasn't really anywhere else to talk alone, anyway, although the plan tonight was to park at a _camp-jo_ and make a bonfire as one final celebration.

"I just..." Hands deep in his pockets, Ryuji shrugged. "We gonna try and make this work? Like I come visit you on holidays and stuff."

"Is that what you want?" Akira asked, stripping all expectation out of his voice.

"I want--" Ryuji cut himself off with a curse, but when his eyes wandered away from Akira's, there was nowhere to stare but the mirror bolted to the wall. "Ann and Makoto are dating, right? Like really dating."

He was ninety-nine percent sure they weren't _fake_ dating, but left that observation in the back of his mind with a few other ill-advised jokes. "Yeah, Ryuji. They're girlfriends."

"That's what I want." Ryuji muttered in a rush, then stumbled over adding, "A boyfriend, I mean. Not a girlfriend, and I mean _you_ , not some random guy--"

Akira let Ryuji catch a breath before he took a step forward, bringing them face-to-face. Black hair mussed against blond spikes, the frame of his glasses wedged right along Ryuji's brow, and for a second it was so awkward, the two of them started to laugh.

"What were you just trying to do?" Ryuji asked, although he didn't bother stepping back.

"Look into your eyes and be very serious and romantic." Akira cleared his throat, hoping to recover a little bit of composure. "Listen, all my practice is on women a decade older than me, and they're shorter than you."

"Rub it in, playboy." Still, Ryuji's grin had only gotten wider. "Ready to settle down, then?"

'Settle' was a funny word for it, when half his heart was going home to Tokyo soon.

\--

The bonfire took four tries to get lit, and Akira was fairly sure Ann had been about to summon Hecate and set every stick they gathered ablaze. Thankfully, Makoto knew enough to salvage the little nest of coals until the wood finally caught and crackled with flame.

"My father took Sae and I camping a few times when we were little." She murmured, wiping a hint of ash from her fingertips. "He wanted us to learn to appreciate nature."

"I bet your sister hated it." Ann said, loosely slipping an arm around Makoto's back.

That earned a smile, awkward but genuine. "She did. Dad always ended up telling his wildest case stories to keep her entertained."

"Is that an invitation to share ghost stories?" Yusuke leaned in over the fire, his hands raised up to make a theatrical shadow.

"It's so not." Futaba rolled her eyes, then tried to nudge Morgana off her lap. "Come on, I've got to get my laptop out."

"It's in the car for a reason!" His protest ended on a yowl when his tail dared too near the sparks popping off the fire. "This is our last night together."

Her eyes narrowed. "I have something to show everyone. I'm not isolating."

"Let Futaba get up, Morgana." Akira chimed in. "You can sit with us."

Ryuji grumbled a little, but moved over a few inches so Morgana could curl up in a warm spot. The moment she was free, Futaba darted over to the van, untangling cables until she extricated her computer out of the central knot. Akira couldn't imagine how she got any connection out here, but it didn't seem to matter as the screen came to life.

At first, he couldn't make out what he was looking at. The page was plain, but had a dozen entries, typed like a journal and occasionally punctuated with emoji. The little lock at each corner didn't escape him, but presumably Futaba had bypassed any attempt at keeping the site private.

"So uh, what's this?" Ryuji asked.

"I found another one." Futaba tapped a key, bringing up a picture of a woman that looked a little older than their group. Familiarity ticked at the back of Akira's mind, trying to figure out where he recognized her from. "Another Persona user."

"Wait, isn't that _Rise_?" Squinting at the screen, Ann scoffed. "Futaba, are you sure--"

"This is her private diary from a few years ago." After flipping the laptop back her way, Futaba quickly typed something out. "When she took a hiatus in Inaba."

"But how did you find it?" Yusuke frowned. "And why?"

"I was searching for any mention of Personas or Shadows hidden away online. I knew we couldn't be the ones that had gone through something like this." Another couple of keystrokes followed, and when Futaba turned the screen to the group again, a complicated web of faces and connections were displayed. "And once I found her, I found a lot more."

Makoto's mouth tensed into a thin line. "The Kirijo Group?"

"Yeah, that name comes up a _lot_." Futaba let out a little laugh. "Actually, I'm pretty sure those cogpsi noobs were just ripping off Kirijo research. My mom's breakthrough was the first time they discovered something new."

Trying to connect an idol on a comeback tour with an orphaned heiress made Akira's head spin for a moment. A volleyball coach was the one who had gotten them into all of this in the first place, and if corruption didn't wear any one face, perhaps Persona users didn't either.

"But this goes back decades." Futaba continued, then glanced Akira's way. "I mean, you're not even the first Joker."

"That was a name we made up!" Morgana argued, but piped down when Ryuji glared at him.

"Out of thousands of potential ones." Haru added quietly. "What else did you find, Futaba?"

"Plenty. I just haven't put together what it means yet." Her fingers toyed with the hinge of the laptop, as if she was thinking of closing it. "I just...everyone is acting like Akira is going to go home tomorrow and this is all over, but it's not. We're part of something now."

Ryuji's brow crinkled in confusion. "Like a secret society or what?"

"More like a chosen few, I would imagine." For a moment, Makoto was lost in thought, drawing idle circles with her thumb around Ann's knee. "Akira, you know more about the Velvet Room than any of us. Did anyone there talk about this?"

"Not in so many words, but I got the feeling Igor had been there forever." Did that mean there were other Palaces, other gods? He couldn't even begin to be sure. "I can't be the first."

"Does it really matter?" Yusuke asked, raising a brow. "We won, and now we must part."

"I think Futaba is saying we should keep in touch." Tugging down her sleeves to warm her hands, Haru offered Akira a small smile. "I hoped that we would anyway."

"Me too." Ann added, and Makoto nodded definitively beside her.

"I mean, I've gotta." Ryuji looked away from the fire, meeting Akira's eyes instead. "He's my boyfriend."

The resounding chorus of _aww_ broke the tension around the bonfire, and Ryuji demanded that everyone shut up, unable to hide the blush on his face except by burying it against Akira's shoulder. After a moment, he offered his hand to Ryuji, and found his fingers locked in a deathgrip.

\--

It took a few months for him to fall into a routine back home.

Sleeping was the hardest, the quiet darkness that lay over the town like a blanket at odds with constant traffic and flashing lights, the vitality of a city that never found rest. His parents worried at a distance, although Akira was convinced they were more concerned about him sneaking out at night than tossing and turning in bed.

After all, they had only sent him one letter when he was in jail, formal and stiff.

"Am I supposed to be that kind of person, Morgana?" He asked aloud, glancing towards the cat lounging on his windowsill. "After what Futaba said, I thought..."

Morgana's tail curled up like a question mark. "You'd get to be a hero again?"

That wasn't quite how he would have chosen to put it, but Akira had to admit there was some truth to the phrasing. "Everyday here, they ask about when I'm applying to college, when I'm choosing my future. I saw the world _break_ and I just--"

There was no reversing time, no stepping back over that line. Now that the shroud around everything was pierced through, he couldn't help but see.

"Your phone's buzzing." Morgana said, and Akira realized he had zoned out for a good minute.

He sat up to pull it out of his pocket. "Thanks."

It was an email notification, although not from an address he recognized. Expecting spam, Akira had his thumb poised to condemn the message to the trash until the four words across the screen sank in.

_We need to talk._

"Who's that from?" Morgana tilted his head, trying to read the email upside-down.

"Narukami Yu." He had no idea who that was, but immediately forwarded the message to Futaba so they could find out. "I think the end of things was just the beginning, Morgana."

"Once a Phantom Thief, always a Phantom Thief." The cat preened. "Maybe we should be looking at tickets to Tokyo."

Akira smiled, and deep in his heart, he felt Satanael do the same.

\--  


**Author's Note:**

> I know ATLUS will probably eventually do crossovers with the P5 cast and everyone else, but in general, I love the idea of all the Persona users eventually running into each other.


End file.
